Me handing him the keys to my mother’s car because he said she had forgotten them.
But that made no sense.
Her car had been found miles away.
At the bottom of Bellweather Ravine.
I read on.
The night Mom disappeared, Dad asked you to say he had been home since nine. You did. You told the police he was upstairs taking a shower when Mom called to say she was driving back from Aunt Lydia’s house. You thought you heard the shower. You did not know he had left it running.
My hands began trembling.
The memory changed.
My father in the kitchen, soaked from the rain.
The wall clock behind him.
Not nine fifteen.
Eleven forty-two.
I had lied to the police.
I had told them he had been home all evening because he took my face in both hands and said, Claire, your mother may be hurt. The police cannot waste time questioning me.
I had repeated his story word for word.
A sixteen-year-old girl trying to save her mother.
Instead, I had protected the man who killed her.
I folded in half.
Ben grabbed me and lowered me onto a plastic chair.
“I’m going to be sick.”
He crouched in front of me.
“Breathe.”
“Don’t tell me to breathe.”
“I need you conscious.”
“Why? So you can tell me the rest of my life is a lie?”
“No. So we can stop him.”
I looked up.
“Stop him from what?”
Ben glanced at the letter.
“Rosie believed your father knew she had discovered the truth.”
A coldness spread through me.
“The pregnancy complication—”
“The doctors think it was natural.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you suspect him.”
“I suspect Richard of anything now.”
My father had been in the hospital that morning.
He had kissed Rosie’s forehead before they took her upstairs.
He had called her his brave little girl.
Then he had left, saying he could not bear to watch his daughter suffer.
I remembered the way he had gripped Ben’s shoulder.
Take care of her.
Had it been a plea?
Or a warning?
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Probably at home.”
“Call the police.”
“We don’t have enough yet.”
“There’s a letter saying he murdered my mother.”
“A letter written by his daughter after reviewing evidence we haven’t secured.”
“What evidence?”
Ben looked down the hallway.
Then he lowered his voice.
“Inside your house.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Rosie hid something there.”
“Why my house?”
“Because Richard never visits without warning. She believed it was the safest place.”
“What did she hide?”
“A drive.”
“What’s on it?”
“Audio recordings. Bank records. Scanned letters. Part of a video.”
“Part of a video of what?”
“Your mother’s final night.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“We’re going.”
“We cannot leave until we know whether Rosie and the babies—”
The operating-room doors opened.
A surgeon stepped through in blue scrubs, her mask hanging loose beneath her chin.
Ben froze.
The surgeon’s eyes found him first.
“Mr. Carter?”
He moved toward her.
I followed, every other horror suddenly pushed aside by the only one that mattered.
“Your wife survived the surgery,” the doctor said.
Ben made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
I grabbed his arm.
“And the babies?”
“One boy and one girl. Both are alive.”
My knees weakened again.
The surgeon continued, “They’re extremely premature, but their heart rates are stable. The neonatal team is taking them to intensive care.”
Ben covered his mouth.
“What about Rosie?”
“She lost a great deal of blood. We controlled the bleeding, but she suffered a period of reduced oxygen and went into cardiac arrest for forty-three seconds.”
